We are officially back from our California vacation.  I’ve got the day off, because we didn’t get home until around 2:00 this morning, but as I stepped outside into the 90-degree heat this morning I quickly realized we were no longer in California.  Boooo.  We actually put some small amount of effort into extending the trip.  The Royals are at Angels stadium this evening, which would have justified another night.  We also wanted to put off facing the cat as long as possible;  The Wrath of Kane is indeed a fearful  display of spitefulness.  But, it just wasn’t to be.  For one thing, Donette leaves tomorrow on a business trip, and for another our debit card mysteriously quit working a few days ago.

Great trip though, I feel like I have been gone for a lot longer than a week.  There were a lot more “activities” involved with this trip than usual, which I think made it more enjoyable.  To skim the highlights, we flew into Oakland on the 13th with the Martins.  Donette and Kelly were running in the Napa to Sonoma 1/2 marathon on Sunday, so the first weekend events centered around that.  The run went off without a hitch.  Matter of fact, they really didn’t even seem tired and we ended up meeting some friends and going out for the evening.  Monday I got up semi-early and joined Chris, David (a friend of ours who just happened to be in town from DC,) and Steve (who lives there) for a quick nine holes of golf.  Believe it or not, this marked the first time in my entire life I’ve played a round of golf.  It was a great time, if maybe more due to the 68-degree weather than the actual game.  Mercifully, there is no photo documentation of this event.  After that, we picked up the girls and Steve took us on a tour of the Sonoma Wineries.  Tuesday marked the end of the Martin’s trip, so we dropped them back at the airport and started the next leg of our trip, which was a drive down scenic Highway One.  I am most definitely not a fan of driving, but if you have to be stuck in a car for any extended period of time that’s definitely the road to be on.  Honestly I would rate it over the famed “Road to Hana,” which we’ve driven a couple of times also.  Donette had planned the trip down the coast in relatively short hops so as not to exceed my notoriously short attention span, so we had lots of sight-seeing breaks along the way.  A few of the more interesting stops were lunch at Nepenthe in Big Sur, and a tour of the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Late Thursday night, we arrived in San Clemente for the Schirner Family Reunion.  This is my Mom’s side of the family, and this marked the third time we had all managed to get together from various parts of the country to descend on my Uncle Jack’s house in Laguna Niguel.  Mercifully for him, the reunions are pretty spread out.  Let’s just put it this way:  In the pictures of the first reunion, I had a full head of hair and Donette was sporting a sexy spiral perm.  And, at the last one all the younger kids were just starting their educations;  This time they were telling us what colleges they planned on attending.  Whew, time flies.  It would still be a pain though, I felt sorry for them.  At one point I counted 34 people in their back yard, ouch.  That’s what happens when you live in a “destination location” though I guess, something I don’t have to worry about.  I can even safely gamble a polite offer to host the next one, knowing nobody will actually take me up on it.  “Hey, how about everybody come to my house in beautiful KC for the next reunion?”  Uh, gee Phil, thanks but no thanks.  Perfect crime.

Yeah, I know, I never got around to my regularly scheduled “Monday update.”  I’m terribly busy.  With what, I’m not sure, but it sure feels like I am.  Sort of a shame, because I had a rather fun-filled weekend too.  Nothing I haven’t repeatedly posted for the last six months in a row though, at the end of the day.

Yesterday, my daily excitement consisted of taking the pets in for their annual shots.  Both of them.  At the same time.  Kane actually hasn’t been to the vet for many years now;  I’m going to guess five.  It’s just too traumatic,  not only for the cat, but for me.  Now Teagan, she just doesn’t get too bent out of shape about the whole thing.  She gets petted, scores a treat or three, gets to go on an exciting car ride…  It’s all good.  Poor little Kane though.  First you have to get him stuffed in his little kennel, an exercise in frustration itself.  Then you get to look forward to a twenty minute car ride listening to his unceasing howling.  (Tempered by the comical looks Teagan was giving him.)  And then the actual vet’s office.  I probably should have snapped a picture of him.  There was no getting him out of the kennel, he had splayed out his legs into some kind of death-wedge, and wasn’t moving.  So, we ended up dismantling the kennel.  Once the top was off, the vet grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and the look of abject terror on his face was indeed photo-worthy.  I felt sorry for the poor little guy, but at the same time I was trying not to laugh.  To his credit, he actually handled the shots pretty well, which is to say he didn’t bite anyone.  A few more pitiful moans, a few failed escape attempts, but no bloodshed;  I call that a good trip.  He was also much calmer on the ride home, or possibly in shock.

There is a very real chance I won’t make it through the summer.  I can’t take the heat.  This reminds me of the failed Fort Worth experiment.  Next move, Minnesota?  Eh, we managed a decent weekend despite the rather oppressive weather though.  Friday, I snuck out of work a bit early and headed out to Olathe for some fun at a firing range.  There were about a dozen of us, and we had quite a time.  We went to a place called OMB Guns, and they had an impressive selection of entertainment for us.  We rented an old Thompson, which was an absolute riot, and a few other full-auto toys.  Then, just for kicks, we took some turns with a .308 and a rather ridiculous .50 caliber Barrett.  Good times! After blowing up a sufficient amount of paper, I headed back to the neighborhood and sat out on the Brooksider patio with the regular crowd, trying not melt.

Saturday Donette got me up at 05:00 and dragged me down to her weekend training run.  I certainly didn’t hold a lot of interest in getting up at that time of day, but I guess it did beat the heat.  She was off on a 12-mile jaunt with her training group, so I hauled my bicycle along to get a little exercise too.  The marking were still on the street from the Fountain Tour, so I hit that route again.  Good ride I suppose;  MAN it was hot.  After that energetic start to the day, Martin came over and we set about preparing for Donette & Kelly’s fundraiser party that evening.  They “hired” the TFB team for catering, so we had some small amount of work to do before the event.  The party was over at our friend Susan’s house that evening, and I thought it went off rather well.  Good crowd, good feed, good times.

Sunday we got to head back to Susan’s and clean up.  Eeesh, the “not-so-fun” part of the event.  It wasn’t too bad, except I managed to torque my old back something fierce.  I swear, I can’t walk across a room without hurting myself these days.  All that work made us hungry, so we headed out to yet another fund-raising event for her team.  One of her fellow runners was out at Cronin’s in Lenexa.  Hey, we were hungry, I needed some cold a/c to watch the Royal’s…  Perfect crime.  Donette sat over at the “girls table” all afternoon.  Luckily my friend Mike decided to drive out and join us so I didn’t have to sit by myself watching the game.  We hung out there until 3:00-ish, then headed back to the proper side of the state line.  By this time, my back was really throbbing, so I spent the rest of the day on the couch watching movies.  Judging from the twenty minutes it took to get out of bed this morning, that might not have been the best remedy.

That seemed like a long weekend to me.  That would typically rank as a good thing, but the reason it seemed long is because I worked all night Saturday.  Ugh.  I’m too old to be dragging in at 5:00 in the morning.  We mixed in some fun too though.  Friday, of course, I hit the Brooksider to hang out with the boys for a while.  Made it a short night though, mostly because, well, I’m broke again.

Saturday morning Donette got up early and went running with Kelly.  I think I heard they did six miles or something ludicrous like that.  After they got back we hopped on the motorcycle and met some people out in Martin City for a fund raising ride.  That’s the first big group motorcycle ride I’ve ever been on, and it was a blast.  From the description of the event, I thought we were just taking a quick ride to Pleasant Hill for a picnic.  As it turned out, we took a series of back roads to get there, stretching the trip to a little over 80 miles.  Throw in a few breaks along the way and the picnic out at a guy’s farm, and the ride ended up taking the better part of the day.  I’d planned on being back home around noon, but as it turned out it was closer to six.  That’s a lot of fun for twenty bucks!  (By the way, don’t cash that check until the 30th…)

Sunday I slept in after my night at work, then once it got nice and toasty I went out and mowed.  Ugh.  Got it knocked out though, and then I rewarded myself with a trip down to the Brooksider to watch the ball game.  They had it good and icy in there, so I ended up staying for the whole depressing game.  As a side note, I couldn’t help but notice they were blasting the sound on the game outside on the patio.  I’ve been going down there nearly every weekend to watch the game and they never have the sound on.  You can watch it on the TV’s outside but they’re always playing some atrocious music.  So, now that’s it is too hot to sit out there, they decide to put the game on.  Go figure.  Anyway, after that we headed over to our friend Susan’s house for a tasty spaghetti dinner and so ended the weekend.

To conclude this riveting blog entry, I have to add a short blurb about our home network upgrade over the weekend.  I know, I know, nobody wants to hear about my computer upgrades.  But they’re just so darned EXCITING!!  For my latest project, I set about putting my NAS device to use for the purpose it was actually intended;  Storing some data.  All it’s ever really done is run this website, it didn’t have enough drive space for much else.  I fixed this issue by slapping a nifty new 2 Terabyte drive in it.  That should hold me on space for a while.  It took several hours to the website back up and running, and then I moved all our music, photos, documents, etc over to it.  Sounds easy enough, but no small task actually.  In addition to the amount of time it took to drag several hundred gig of files across my little home network, I had to update the hated iTunes to work with the new location.  But, at the end of the day, I finally have some free space on my PC, and all our “stuff” is available to any computer in the house.  And, quite possibly, to anybody on the Internet;  That’s my next project.

Whew, heating up outside already.  Despite the punishing weather, we got in our share of outdoor activities this weekend.  I kicked it off Friday by sitting down at the Brooksider with the boys all evening.  OK, I’ll grant you that may not be considered an “activity” by most.  But it was, in fact, outdoors.  Meanwhile, Donette was wrapping up a week in Chicago.  She had been there since last Friday starting the first week of her NEW JOB!!!  I’ll let her fill you in on all those riveting details.  All I know is we’re a two-income family again, WHEW!!  Myself and my creditors are quite excited.

Donette returned from her travels late Friday night, and then she got up very early (before even myself) and headed off for a 12-mile run.  She is definitely ramping up the mileage in preparation for her upcoming 1/2-marathon in July.  Personally I think it sounds a bit aggressive, but then I’m not a runner so what do I know.  She didn’t get home from that endeavor until around noon, by which time I had accomplished pretty much nothing at all.  Well, you know, the Royals were coming on at 1:00 and I didn’t want to get wrapped up in anything before that and…  Yeah whatever.  Gunsmoke was on, ’nuff said.  When she finally showed up, she rallied me off the couch and we headed down to Kelly’s to show some support for one of her fellow fund-raisers.  Not so hard to get out for that event honestly;  I like Kelly’s, the game was on TV, they have good a/c…  Yeah it worked out well.  We hung out there until the game was over, then rolled back inside our circle for some dinner at Kin Lin’s.  I really do enjoy that place, although I will readily admit few share that sentiment.  Matter of fact, Donette isn’t overly fond of it, she just humored me this time I guess.  Case in point, she wasn’t too keen on her dinner Saturday.  I liked mine though!

Sunday I got up early and biked down to Union Station to join Munkirs participating in the City of Fountains bike ride.  We’ve done this one a few times in past years, but were going to take a pass this time until they announced some event changes.  They had a 50-mile option this year which sort of fit in with our training schedule so we figured what the heck.  They also introduced staggered start times, which definitely worked out better.  The only downside to that was, being on the longest route, we had to be there signed in and ready at the unholy hour of 07:00, yuck.  It was a good ride overall.  Fifty miles felt about right, and the route was nice with the exception of an ill-fated jaunt down the Brush Creek trail.  Hmmmm thirty riders crammed onto a sidewalk for three miles…  Yeah let’s scratch that part for next year.  Another nice addition was that they spray-painted the fountain numbers on the street as you passed each one so you could glance over at them.  It’s pretty easy to forget you’re supposed to be actually touring the fountains if you’re just riding along.  It was kind of interesting actually;  If you REALLY cared the numbers corresponded with a booklet they handed out at the start and you could read a little history on each.  I figured I was doing good to just look over and acknowledge “yep, that’s a fountain.”  In all we passed 45 different fountains along the way, far more than I would have guessed were it not actually documented right there on the street.  When we got back to Union Station they had a nice little picnic set up and Donette joined me for lunch.  That was a nice addition too, although I really would have opted for a shower at that point than a lunch.  Still fun.  We went home and both sacked out for a while after that, then I got up and watched that marathon Royals game.  After they finally won, we ran up to 75th Street for some dinner and called it a weekend.